State Sen. Daniel Biss ( D-Evanston ), this past March, announced his intention to run for the Democratic slot in the contest to unseat Republican incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2018.
Biss made the announcement via Facebook Live on March 20, explaining that his was a more direct, grassroots campaign that could ultimately result in solving a stalemate between the General Assembly and the governor's office during Rauner's administration.
Formerly a math instructor, Biss maintains that his statehouse experience gave him an intricate knowledge of the legislative process and the value of partisan and bipartisan cooperation. The state senator recently spoke with Windy City Times about the state of the state, his intentions as governor and LGBT issues, among other topics.
Windy City Times: How do you see your legislative experience, and other experiences, qualifying you to be governor?
Daniel Biss: We have Bruce Rauner as the governor and Donald Trump as president. We have these kinds of people at both the state and federal level—two businessmen with no experience in government who tried to impose their will on the [political] systems. I think that's dangerous.
I've been in the legislature for six-and-a-half years. I have worked on complex, difficult issues. I have fought to build coalitions to pass legislation, like one of the first conversion therapy bans in the country. Those were not, obviously, going to pass if it were not for the ability to find out what it takes to make the various members of the legislature tick and get the various numbers of votes that you need.
We're going to need a governor in January 2019 with those kinds of experiences because we have huge challenges that require bold solutions. Those bold solutions aren't going to pass by themselves; they're going to pass if you have a governor who understands how state government works and how a state legislature works.
WCT: What do you see as your biggest advantage in the primary contest?
DB: This is a moment where people are hungry for an aspirational, progressive vision for what we can do, not just defeat Bruce Rauner and fix what's wrong, but build an Illinois for everyone. I've been fighting, in many cases successfully, against long odds, in the Illinois legislature for the last six-and-a-half years to do just that. I think the people of Illinois are hungry for a governor who's not just going to tear down our state, or even "the other side," but talk about letting people be pulled up. I've got a good record on that that I'm proud of.
WCT: What do you see as your biggest disadvantage?
DB: I'm not a billionaire. I'm not a millionaire. I might be a "thousand-aire" but I'm not totally sure; I'm not sure what my house is worth right now. I get that there's a lot of people who see this as, we're not going to have an election, we're just going to have an auction. I'm not going to win an auction for this office. I understand that that's a challenge, but I also think that this is a moment where people are ready for a grassroots campaign that all of us own a piece of. Even in this era of big money in politics, I like my chances.
WCT: What do you mean by "all of us own a piece" of the campaign?
DB: It means that it's run under grassroots power: volunteers organizing in their own communities and every corner of the state of Ilinois, people chipping in small donations, because they want a campaign financed by all of us, as opposed to being spread by big money or corporate interests.
WCT: What would be some of your largest priorities if you were to become governor?
DB: We need to fix our tax system. We have one of the most unfair tax codes in the country that puts too much of a burden on the middle-class and the working poor. As a result, we don't even have adequate revenue, because over the course of generations, most of the money has gone to the top and we can't access it. So we've got to fix our tax code and use those resources that we will bring in to invest properly in schools … [and] stop short-changing children who live in poor communities across the state of Illinois.
We also need to have more direct investments that create economic opportunity everywhere, as well as a force for social justice and economic justice. I plan to run on all of those fronts.
WCT: What would be the best ways for the state to rectify its ongoing budget woes?
We have to have a tax system written for the 2017 economy, not a different economy from generations ago. That means people pay their fair share. That means shifting away from the property tax as the primary means of funding schools, not to mention lots of other parts of our public sector. So right now, what we do is burden the middle-class so much, while letting the richest residents off the hook, and what we have now are struggling families and a struggling government that can't afford to move forward.
We [also] have to create new ways to address inefficiencies in government. For example, we've got 628 pension systems in Illinois, because each town has two—one for their firefighters and one for their police officers; that creates a tremendous amount of duplication and additional costs, and a whole cottage-industry of investment- and legal-consultants who go from town-to-town, charging high fees. We need to consolidate those pension systems to create a far more efficient system that will cost less money to the taxpayer without touching the pension of a single firefighter or police officer. We need to re-envision government for the 21st Century, and make sure that it's streamlined and operating in as efficient away as possible.
WCT: You've already mentioned your work on the conversion-therapy bill. What is some of the other engagement that you've had with the LGBT community you'd like to mention?
DB: Besides the conversion-therapy ban—which is really one of my proudest achievements in the legislature—the other bill that I was the lead sponsor of around LGBTQ rights was a bill this year to ban the "gay panic defense." It's going to sound crazy, but it's true that right now the law doesn't stop someone from murdering someone because they discovered that the [victim] was gay and using the fact that the victim was gay as a defense in a court of law.
I'm also proud of the work that I've done as an ally of other leaders on these issues. I was a proud early sponsor of the marriage equality bill; the first speech that I gave on the Senate floor was in support of marriage equality and I quietly worked behind the scenes to persuade people and get votes in line to pass that into law. I worked very hard at the end of this legislative session in 2017 as we were trying to round up the votes to pass the bill that modernizes our vital records law, so that individuals can have their gender-marker on their birth certificates changed.
I have been proud to stand with the LGBTQ community loudly and clearly to affirm our state's, not just commitment to, but reliance on, LGBTQ equality. We suffer as a state if we don't affirm LGBTQ equality.
WCT: What do you see as vital priorities for LGBT Illinoisans?
DB: As the Trump administration rescinded the Obama administration's bathroom protections for transgender students, we've had some school districts do good work on that. I've been fighting on the local level in my own district to make sure that our school districts do that [as well]. But we've seen terrible bills on the state level that we've been able to kill. We haven't seen a strong and affirmative transgender student bathroom protection bill move in the Senate, and we ought to do that. That's something I'll be fighting for in the legislature as well as governor.
I want the LGBTQ community to know that my cabinet, as governor, will look like the state of Illinois—that includes representation from the LGBTQ community. I think it's also important to talk about what not having a sane budget does to vulnerable communities, such as for people who are HIV-positive. I think funding for healthcare for HIV-positive people is unbelievably important, and it's been harmed in the budget impasse.
We live in an era where not all LGBTQ people are fully accepted by their families, and as a result, there's a greater instance of homelessness amongst LGBTQ youth, and, tragically, a greater instance of mental-health difficulties, substance abuse issues and even suicide amongst LGBTQ people, particularly youth. That means that when the state government, by virtue of its inability to have a budget because of Bruce Rauner's ideological demands, harms those programs, those consequences are disproportionately felt by the LGBTQ community. We've got a responsibility to fund these services in a robust way for everybody, but especially the LGBTQ community.
WCT: What can the state government do to ensure the equitable treatment for transgender Illinoisans, beyond what you've spoken about already?
DB: Part of it is around laws and part of it is around actions. When it comes to laws, we have to just be very clear about full, real equality in all contexts—not just employment and non-discrimination rules. It's great to have that, but it also means bathrooms. It means hate crimes. It means legal protections in a court of law. It means public accommodations and fighting back against so-called "religious freedom" laws that enable public accommodations and businesses to discriminate on the basis of gender identity.
I also think it means behavior and rhetoric. We have this moment where, let's just be clear, there are a lot of people in Illinois today who think they've never met a trans person. There are a lot of people today who are uncomfortable with what it means today to be a trans or gender-nonconforming person, or just not fit into that gender-binary that we try to jam down people's throats irresponsibly. We need visible public leaders not just to affirm … [but] to talk openly about what it means to break out of the gender binary and how to support trans youth as they go through the journey of trying to understand their own gender identity.
WCT: How do you see the future of the Democratic Party?
DB: I love that question, because the Democratic Party gets to decide who we are going to be right now, and it's partially because of these devastating losses.
In a moment like that, where we're flat on our back, be basically get to decide who we are. I think we can decide are we going to be a millionaire party or are we going to be a middle-class party. Are we going to be a corporate party or a grassroots party? Are we going to lift people up everywhere, or are we going to focus on a few places where we know it's easy to locate opportunity that already exists?
I think that the question about the future of the Democratic Party is already critical—that fight is on. If we get that right, and build a genuine, grassroots, movement-based people's party for a growing middle-class, the Democratic Party will not only be standing for the right issues—we will be successful, because we'll be offering the public something which it is deeply hungry for right now.
This is one of a series of interviews Windy City Times is running regarding gubernatorial candidates. For more on Biss, visit DanielBiss.com .
